Lost Coin Class Notes 20 May 2008

Housekeeping

Some LC content will be recorded for the Kanzeon website, Daniel's comments only, not the student's.

There will be LC members in Germany (~6, Willkommen!), including the head of a company, which may be influenced by the group.  New directions are opening.  Daniel would like LC to be international, a large group, we will have travel opportunities, and he would like us to think of ourselves as international citizens.

This Fall- in early September- German students will attend LC retreat.  Daniel asked us if we would prefer Red Cliff in Moab, Boulder Mountain in Torrey, or camping in the desert, maybe at Hatch Point.  Many voted for camping, but the logistics are more difficult and the international students will be coming from much further?

Day long sitting at Kim's- we will choose a date soon.

Workshop on beliefs- please email Rebecca if you would like to go but cannot make June 14th or June 21, then we can select a date.

Daniel recommends that we sit on Thursday, the added continuity and time spent with the group has high yield potential!

Tonight's Topic:  Being Stuck and Chief Feature

Daniel notes that German students are very contemporary and that Zen in our group should be completely contemporary, fitting into life rather than a monastery.  He teaches independently of religion.  This may be perceived as radical, but it is not.  Zen changed from India to China, and from China to Japan.  The Japanese went so far as to burn texts, and answers to koans have been published in hopes to abolish that system.

The important thing is to keep the essence, but modernize the methods to suit our practice, which (for us) is in the modern world. We are different now than students  centuries ago.

Old Zen teachings are written by people who lived much shorter lives, we live 3 times longer on average? we should take heart that we will have more time to practice and learn.   We can use that time to try not to get stuck, not living 1 year 90 times, or 20 years 4.5 times, but try to live 90 years.

On an individual basis, what is being stuck?

We think we have a fixed self, a structured self that looks at the world in a certain way, when we observe our lives we may see our body with a little camera capturing events.  Rather we should realize our actual perceptions and sensations, NOT camera visions.

Through sitting, this identity/self becomes thinner and thinner.  Through years of sitting, anger, fear, bad feelings about self fall off, and one stops seeing the localized self.  To be fully conscious is to lose human form.  "the further you go, the less you know"

The goal is to blend the spiritual with the day to day, seeing that we have a particular self with patterns, and realizing that repeating the pattern will give us the same results.

Being Stuck & Chief Feature- chief feature is the place you are stuck the most.  The self identifies here over and over, it's like a glass ceiling, we are habituated and attached to this self.

EXERCISE for this week:  look at the pattern you run over and over, and determine its 'flavor'.  Just as music has an atmosphere or mood, your pattern has an emotion or feeling.  People around you know your pattern, try for yourself to get to the heart of what it's like to be in your skin and how it could be different.  Be as accurate as you can.

What is the pattern creating in your life?

Do you want what it creates?

Where would you like to be instead?

Think of how you experience the pattern, now how others experience you

EXAMPLES of chief features:

You think nobody likes you, and you act this way, so then nobody likes you.

You can't be receptive or passive, you can never surrender to be in conditions that you do not control

You can never commit.  You are unwilling to narrow your options, and say "this is who I truly want to be", and go forward with that.

You may be grouchy, nasty, and blame everyone for what is going wrong, taking no responsibility.

You are constantly comparing your ego to others, and always in competition.

It is an illusion that you have more control by being controlling.  Better to control *yourself.  *People with the most control in life- others would like to see them get what they want.  People will support you, and not in a deceptive way.  Others give you a certain amount of control and feel safe doing so.  Obama is a good example.

Anger, or powerlessness, or control?if these go away, your life will change a lot.  Without these, *things begin to flow in, and a person can open up*.

If each of you moved forward in time to seeing that you are not 'the self', it gets much easier to work on things.  It's not so much you anymore, when you are free from the idea of a fixed self.

Class activity:  Each describe a pattern we repeat.  Examples included fear, anger, living in past; staying distant, always 'fixing things'; lack of trust, not being soft or yielding; concerns about what others think, self judgment and doubting, lack of confidence, indecisiveness; acquiesce to the will of others rather than asserting own desires; pulled in too many directions to engage fulfilling desires; thinking about work too much and playing script, not being present; telling self stories and addiction to the emotions stories hold; manic energy, pouring energy into problem solving; fear of making wrong choices and resulting inaction; not being even-keeled; having 'want to do's' but never acting, then beating self up; create excess distractions and avoiding true desires; having to tell story even when I don't want to, possibly to fit in; reacting quickly rather than taking things in and being reflective; hiding own needs to keep others distant and avoid being vulnerable; hard to trust people; responding to others as if they were mother/father archetypes; squandering time and not achieving potential; seeking perfection and feeling defeated; not trusting self and beating self up.

Final Remarks from Daniel:

Where are we going with this group?

Responses from students:  Create less suffering, be more skillful, be more conscious more of the time, understand reality differently, freedom, clarity, satisfaction, feeling better, feeling content.

Response from Daniel:  to feel free, in a far- reaching way.  Free of ideas about aging, dying, worry, not caring about knowing?. The process for Daniel is about knowing less, and we all see it differently but want a similar thing.

Remember:  you don't need to change who you are?only how deeply you know who you are.
